by A. R. Moxon
* * *
—
It’s nearly dark, and thus far the expected trouble hasn’t arrived. Donk’s closed down the store early, which is a tricky bit of business. You have to come up with a cover story the gangs will believe; Donk decided to claim an internal audit, requiring the manager’s presence. Now they’re by the checkout lanes, pretending to count cash and confabulating. Even so, Bailey frets; there’s always the worry that news of an unauthorized closing will get back to Ralph. They also have to worry about whoever might be on the way.
Donk, being Donk, sees opportunity where Boyd sees only danger. In fact, Donk seems to be ready to shoot some crazy angle, seems to detect some hope that they’ve finally come near the end of their long vengeful road.
The problem with getting Ralph is all the bodyguards. You can’t fight your way into Ralph’s retirement villa. Survival of the fittest? Ralph’s bodyguards are the fittest who survived. Even if you could sneak a weapon past their jealous eyes, you still have Ralph, old, but tough and mean. The odds of prevailing with a shiv against Ralph are not strong, and even then, there would be a bad death afterward. No way to fight past that shrewdness of apes; their paunches hide impenetrable mounds of muscle, they possess a frequently indulged taste for cruel deeds. They know their way around ordnance and cutting edges and brass knuckles, they knew where nerves cluster, they knew where to snip to make your ligaments give way like cables, unroll your muscles inside your skin.
What we need, Daniel is fond of repeating, is an army to go get the bastard. He has the unified gangs, sure, but his tenuous authority over them comes to him from Ralph. No good. He needs another army.
“And it seems the cardinals are an army,” Donk says blandly. He’s keeping as calm as he always does when things get dangerous. “And they seem organized, which suggests a general.”
“An army and a general that are probably after our blood,” Bailey points out.
Donk shrugs. “After us. With us. These things are mostly a matter of perspective. We’ll negotiate those details when and if they show up.”
“It might be the whole army of them,” Bailey says. “Boyd, go back to the Fridge.”
“He stays,” Donk retorts. “I want whoever comes to see him, so they’re sure they came to the right place. Also, if it comes to killing, they might start on him before me. Highly preferable.”
“Not to me,” Boyd says.
Donk smiles. “Yeah. Perspective really is everything, isn’t it?” Bailey gives him an unpleasant look.
They wait. The fluorescents hum. “Maybe nobody will show,” Boyd says, hopefully. Donk doesn’t reply. Another minute passes, and then a shiny red bowling ball comes crashing through the middle pane of the storefront window, punching through the paperpaste sludge of advertisements obscuring it, shattering it into a galaxy of tiny glass beads. For a moment there’s nothing in the gap but night, then a man dodges into sight, steps through the hole with precise, almost dainty, movements. He takes a few crunching steps into the grocery, watching the triad standing at the checkout lanes, then stops: a compact fellow with sharp features and large eyes. Boyd flashes recognition. He’s the guy from before, the man with the syringe—or anyway he’s dressed like him. In his left hand a second bowling ball perches like a spheroid hunting bird.
“Which one of you is the snoop?” he asks. He might be asking for paper instead of plastic, or if he could use the john. Conversational, that voice. Cultured. Polite. A voice that tells you to come on in and asks if you want some tea; meanwhile the bowling ball in his left hand wants to talk business, while his eyes measure you with dispassionate assay, as if counting the exact number of shovel-lifts required to dig your shallow grave.
“I sent him,” Donk lies, and Boyd notices him working his old magic, immediately shifting his tone to match that of his adversary. “That window’s going to cost you about twelve hundred plus installation.”
The man doesn’t move. “What’s your business in the Wales?”
“Maybe we want to welcome you to the neighborhood,” Donk said. “Maybe we didn’t know where to address the postcard.”
“You’re a friendly guy.”
“This is Ralph’s town. I’m Ralph’s guy.”
“The welcome wagon.”
“We can’t have strangers just wandering. It’s not safe for us, for them, for anybody. We can’t be friends that way.”
“So you are friendly.”
“I’m friendly to my friends. Thinking we might be able to help each other, maybe.”
“You have something I need?”
“Nope.” Donk languidly stretches his back. “But I know what you need to know.”
“Then where is he?”
“Most things can be arranged. Where do you want him to be?”
This stops the guy for a moment; he was clearly expecting to be asked who is “he?” Something almost like yearning plays on his face. He says: “If you want to help me, then simply help me. Help me because you understand why you should. Because you’ve learned what sort of lesson you are to me.”
It’s an odd thing to say. Donk wisely ignores it. “Who are you people? What are you doing in these tunnels? After you get your guy, what’s your long game? Do you have a message to Ralph for me?”
The man gives Donk another one of those long appraising looks, as though he were trying to read something in fine print lodged an inch behind Donk’s eyeballs. It’s the look the mongoose gives the cobra. And, as it lengthens, it grows colder and colder. Finally, the man says, “You answer to…Ralph?”
Donk takes a deep breath. “That’s…negotiable. It seems you might be thinking about a move. Maybe you’re even considering a takeover. I may be of use to you there. I—”
“Here’s my message for this ‘Ralph’ of yours,” the man says, and with one practiced flick of the wrist, 224 ounces of Kentucky’s finest compressed urethane leaves his hand, smashing into one of Bailey’s beloved cash registers with a hefty THUK. The register tips, capsizes, and crashes to the tile, where it splits open, belching a cornucopia of spare change. In the instant Bailey head-whips to follow the ball along its path, the man clears the distance, holds a long knife a centimeter from Donk’s throat. “No closer, please,” he purrs to Bailey, and then, addressing Donk: “You think I might be taking over? Don’t you realize I already have? This whole so-called ‘island’ is mine already. Anyone thinking otherwise just hasn’t yet realized my truth. Please,” the man says, stepping away, his voice placid as a monastery pond. “Tell Ralph that. And if you ever send one of your snoops down one of my chimneys again, be sure you’ve made yourself a useful lesson to me, or else you’ll find out exactly what I can do to you. You can go tell Ralph that, too, whoever he is, because the same goes for him. Ralph’s time is done now. Please, go. Tell Ralph.”
Then he backs away, steps through the hole, and is gone. The whole exchange hasn’t taken much more than a minute.
The second ball comes to rest near Boyd’s foot. He picks it up and turns it in his hands: deep maroon with embedded sequins. PROPERTY OF BARNEY’S SUDS the inscription. Fourteen-pounder. “Guy’s got a hell of an arm,” Donk declares.
“He must’ve grabbed them from the alley on his way over,” Boyd muses, mostly to himself.
Bailey, lifting the cash register, inspecting for damage: “Seems there’s a new boss in town.”
“Suppose so. Maybe we can get him to hire us.” Donk looks out the hole in the window.
“And operating out of the Wales,” Boyd says.
“So he claimed,” Donk answers. “All the more reason to learn what Father Julius saw as soon as we possibly can. Boyd, ready to go collect a priest?”
Bailey insists: “I’m going. You’re not sending Boyd with cardinals crawling around.” She’s clearly expecting a fight over the matter, but Donk says nothing, and Bailey leaves for Julius without a
nother word.
“What you’re telling me is you’ve seen the Invisible Man,” Donk says, back in the Fridge, giving Julius a disgusted look. Bailey’s returned with the priest; the four of them enjoying an aperitif in the sitting room. Seemingly out of habit, Donk and Julius have set themselves in adversarial posture, holding the self-serious and fatuous aspects of collegiate debaters. It’s how they spend all their meetings together; it’s this almost fraternity nonsense between the two of them; freed from the obligation on the street to pretend they don’t know each other, it seems both of them just enjoy busting each other’s balls. Donk’s got his tie off and his shirtsleeves rolled up, which is about as ruffled as he ever gets; meanwhile, Bailey keeps alert for trouble—for, though no trouble immediately presents itself, the tone has recently sharpened. The concern’s unnecessary, in Boyd’s opinion. Certainly, she’s seen harsher words pass between the two. But today, the contention between the two appears genuine.
“Flickering man,” Julius says. “He’s not invisible.”
“What does that even mean, flickering—?”
“It means he’s there until he’s not,” Julius says, with the annoyed air of someone repeating an answer he’s given already.
“Fine. So what’s this flickering man’s fluckering name?”
“I didn’t think to ask,” Julius confesses.
Donk clears his throat, ostentatiously skeptical. “Well. I’ve seen a lot, but I’ve never seen a flickering man. Ask me to find a vampire, or a hobbit, maybe—”
“Your people in the Wales haven’t seen anything?”
“My people in the Wales—what people? I don’t deal with that cracker box. Full of vegetables. I’m a meat lover.”
Not a bad line. Boyd fumbles for his pad, jots: cracker box; veggies, meat-lover.
“You must have someone.”
“I’ve got more contacts in your chapel than I do the Wales.” Bailey gives Donk an immodest sideways glance, which surprises Boyd—Bailey’s usually far subtler—but it’s perfectly readable to him: Are we not telling Julius the man with the bowling ball is from the Wales, then? And why not?
Julius’s eyes narrow. “You’ve got…spies at the Neon?”
“I’ve got you. Imbecile.” Donk says, but with affection. Purposefully turning down the temperature; he must have gotten whatever information it was he wanted out of the priest.
Julius smiles. “Ah.” Finishing his drink in small ruminative sips, he says, “But in any case, I’m going to help him, if I can. He says he’s being chased, and sure, he thinks it’s…well, God…in pursuit—but I think he’s right that somebody’s after him. There’s no question he’s scared of something.”
“You’ll want to be quick if you’re going to help him,” Boyd says, and suddenly everybody is paying a whole lot of attention to him. He hadn’t even meant to say it.
“Why quick?” Julius demands. “What do you mean?”
“Yes, Boyd. Do tell us,” Donk says, staring lasers.
Now it’s Boyd’s turn to tell a halting fumbling tale; the vivid man, the man in a powder-blue suit. Overwhelmingly aware that he neglected to tell Donk and Bailey about him, knowing Donk’s going to give him a year’s worth of hell for the lapse—and why, he wonders, did you withhold? You’re his sneak, his snitch, his snatcher, you don’t forget details when you report. It’s almost like you felt compelled to follow the letter of the folding man’s law. Tell Julius he said, so tell Julius you did, and tell Donk you did not. “He’s actually how I found the tunnels,” Boyd finishes. “He told me to check where he was standing. But he also told me that Father Julius didn’t have much time left to help his flickering man out. ‘Hours not days,’ I believe were his words.”
“It’s probably because of the Fritz Act.” Bailey rises, walks to the billiard table, absently juggles two balls with her left hand. “Flickering or not, they’re not going to let him stay anymore, are they? And that’s another thing, Daniel—the Fritz Act. They just let the loonies wander? Have you noticed, every time today there was a gaggle of loonies, there was a cardinal swinging a—”
“Cardinal?” Julius asks.
“Donk’s name for the guys in red. The ones with the swords. Have you seen them?”
“Yeah,” Julius says. “I’ve seen them.”
“And then this mysterious adviser of yours just cut bait and ran off into the night, huh?” Donk asks, clearly not ready to let Boyd off the hook. Boyd, deciding he has enough to explain to Donk already without mention of folding, nods.
“How very unremarkable,” Donk says, just mildly enough to tell Boyd how angry he is.
“I don’t know anybody by that description,” the priest growls. “How does he know me?”
“No clue, Father. He said his name was Landrude, if that helps.”
“Landrude?”
“That’s what he said.”
“I know nobody by that name.”
“Nobody knows anybody by that name,” Donk says. “It’s got to be an alt.”
“Sure, like ‘Donk,’ maybe,” Julius stands. “Unless you’ve got other questions, I’d better go. If Boyd’s weird new friend is right, I’ve got some work to do and a pressing deadline.”
Donk offers his hand. “If we can help, you’ve got us; just let us know.” They exchange some pleasantries and Julius disappears into the summer night. Boyd keeps quiet, knowing he’s about to face a hurricane of recrimination from Donk. But it doesn’t come. Instead Donk sits lost in thought, his drink refilled but forgotten, studying the section of newspaper Julius gave Boyd, with what looks to be a green rectangle colored onto the middle. “It seems to me,” he says, meaningfully, “That there’s somebody, living in the Wales, who is hard to find.”
“There might be.” Bailey, sitting on the billiard table.
“And since there is,” Daniel murmurs, “That hard-to-find somebody might just be the sort of person another somebody might be looking for, very hard, and without success. Yes?”
Boyd gets it. Their friend with the bowling ball had spoken out of turn. “Where is he?” had been the question. The search was for a “him.” Not information. Not a weapon. A guy. Somebody hard to find. And here’s the cardinals walking around the loonies, swinging those wooden swords, searching for…something. And here’s Father Julius with a story about a guy in the Wales who is hard to see. And here’s this new player, who’s set up his operations under the Wales. And, relief: Ralph isn’t personally trying to oust them, which is good, and Ralph’s obviously on the way out, which is better, but Donk’s going to need to be on the right side of the coup—with no idea how to get there.
The pieces fit for Boyd; likely they also fit for Donk, who tells him: “Tail our holy friend. Right now. We might have had more time but you opened your big fat mouth in front of company and put the friar on a fast track. He’s either going to the Wales or his place. Try the Wales first—and be careful. Find out what he knows and what he’s doing, and get back here. I’m visiting our new friend as soon as I can.”
Bailey, obviously unhappy at this direction: “He said if you went without useful information, he’d…” she leaves the implication unstated.
“That’s very true,” Donk replies, without turning from Boyd. “Which is why you need to go right now. Because—” sparing Bailey a glance—“I am sure enough going to go try to get us a new boss and a new army. And thanks to mister ‘hours not days’ here, I’m going as soon as I can.”
“Daniel, this flickering man…that can’t be real. It—”
“Doesn’t matter. It’s a whatever. It’s not what Julius thinks it is, but what he thinks it is doesn’t matter. What matters is, it’s something, and it’s probably the opening we’re looking for. Whatever Boyd can get me, I’ll use. I’ll make the rest up if I need to.”
Bailey stalks back to their room, slamming the door as she goes. Boyd hes
itates, unsure of how best to comfort his sister. She’s made herself so practical, so efficient, self-contained, intimidating; it seems to him sometimes as if she’s become entirely smooth-edged, as untouchable for emotional aid as she is in a grapple…
Donk rounds on his sneak. “Fix your fuckup,” he says, quietly—only his eyes snarl. “We need to do this right. We’re nearly there.” Meaning revenge on Ralph, of course. Considering the three of us are suddenly so close to our goal, thinks Boyd, running through shortcuts and backways, we sure don’t any of us seem happy about it. Is revenge the only thing holding us together anymore? But questions aren’t what you’re made for, Boyd. Do what you do. Sneak, follow, listen…but hey, how had the folding stranger known? How long has he been watching you? And…if Donk is holding back information from Julius, Boyd, what might he be hiding from you? All this behind-door work, all this subterfuge, but why does it seem so much like you’re being left out of it somehow? Why this sense that there’s some piece of it you’re being left out of? It feels like a sort of soft death, it feels like fading into some un-noticeable grayness where you’re less than not, subject to vagaries of chance, subject to infinite change, it feels like…
It feels like you’re falling out of your own story.
Hmm. There might be a story in that.
Out comes the pad, he jots: folding, falling, out of story, subject to infinite change.
As Donk predicted, Julius’s destination is the Wales; he’s in the day room where Boyd ran into the priest this morning, the spot where Julius claims he first saw the flickering man. And a good thing too—my God, you’ve seen the pace the fellow sets. If he’d been going far, you’d have lost him for good. Boyd maneuvers against the walls until he spots Father Julius sitting in an alcove, talking across a low table to an empty chair—Damn. There’s no mysterious man, there’s nothing; the priest truly has gone batty, the whole story is guff. Boyd hides behind a nearby davenport and peeks around at poor old Father Julius blabbering away at nothing and nobody, and wonders—Why are you so down about this? You’re not like Donk, hoping so badly to acquire a playing chip to curry favor with some new boss, so you can get at Ralph. The revenge is Donk’s thing, and maybe Bailey’s. For Boyd, Ralph’s crimes have drifted into haze; it’s past, it’s over, it’s bad shit that happened in a place where bad shit happens. So why this deflation, this sense of loss, to find Julius sitting here talking to the air? Perhaps it’s that it’s a dangerous development for Donk, who’s planning to go seek a dangerous man’s patronage. He’ll need something real to offer, not some street minister’s bunk. But it’s not concern for a friend, no; Donk is more than capable of handling himself. Perhaps it’s just that it’s sad to see yet another pillar of the community lose out to the ceaseless grind of Loony Island’s depredations, to see a sanity that previously seemed steadfast finally shredding? It feels like…like some sort of secret hope has died. Boyd admonishes himself—Well, what did you expect, though, really? It’s not a believable story. A flickering man? And since that’s not right—